`NORTH , SOUTH` SETS THE STAGE FOR SPRING WAR

Steve DaleyCHICAGO TRIBUNE

In a time of narrowing commitments in television entertainment, ABC will atttempt to send your household sprawling this week with 12 hours of ''North and South.''

A six-night adaptation of the best-selling novel by John Jakes, ''North and South'' will begin at 8 p.m. Sunday on WLS-Ch. 7 and continue, in two-hour segments, on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and next Sunday.

By that time, ABC will have plumbed the depth of your loyalty to the long mini-series format, and the favor in which you hold the Hazards of Lehigh Station, Pa., and the Mains of Mont Royal, S.C.

It will be more than an esthetic judgment, because production already has begun on the sequel, scheduled for 12 hours next spring and tentatively titled ''North and South, Book II.''

''If `North and South` is a television success,'' says executive producer David L. Wolper, ''I expect we`ll call the second part after the first. If it isn`t, we may well call it `Love and War,` which, of course, was the name of Jakes` second book in the Civil War series.''

As ABC struggles with its prime-time schedule, lagging in the ratings, the stakes on ''North and South'' have increased. Filmed over five months, primarily in Charleston, S.C. and Natchez, Miss., the mini-series is budgeted at about $25 million, or nine episodes worth of ''Miami Vice.''

As television, ''North and South,'' set in the 25 years leading up to the Civil War, is alternately tedious and compelling. There is a basic, undeniable appeal in the friendship between Orry and George, and Douglas Heyes, who adapted the novel for TV, has a knack for keeping a handful of subplots chuggging along. But ''North And South'' is, at bottom, a set-up for the war story to come; those combat scenes you`ve been seeing on network promos during the World Series are a synthesis of one, count `em, one battle scene in the production.

It`s a difficult mix when asking for 12 hours and six nights of viewer time, even in the VCR age. The early book would indicate that, indeed, it may be asking too much.

In talking about his production, Wolper, the force behind such celebrated mini-series as ''Roots'' and ''The Thorn Birds,'' makes much of the fidelity shown to Jakes` antebellum novel, which sold more than 2.5 million copies.

''This is John Jakes` `North and South,` he insists. ''It`s not David Wolper`s `North and South.` We worked very hard to keep the script faithful to what was in the book.''

That is just a part of Wolper`s betting hedge. ''North and South'' is cluttered with established stars in cameo roles, though the promos for the mini-series might lead you to believe that Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Mitchum, Gene Kelly, Johnny Cash, Hal Holbrook and Robert Guillaume will be turning up in period costume or pitched battle night after night.

Not so. Each cameo is just that, a walk-through by a recognizable Hollywood face and body. If you miss Chapter 5 next Saturday, for example, you will miss entirely Taylor`s star turn as a madam in a New Orleans bordello.

What you will see is a complex and often merely complicated story of two American familes set, ultimately, at cross purposes. Orry Main, played by Patrick Swayze, is a planter`s son, the pride of Southern aristocracy on his way to West Point in 1842. En route, he meets George Hazard (James Read), the son of a Northern industrialist.

On the same trip, Main is confronted by Madeline Fabray (Lesley-Anne Down), a New Orleans beauty on her way to a disastrous marriage to Main`s neighbor, Justin LaMotte, played in broad, bad-guy strokes by David Carradine. Orry, George and smoky-eyed Madeline are at the center of ''North and South.'' If their friendship, loves, travails and, in Madeline`s case, cleavage, interests you, then the mini-series is likely to become a part of your week. If not, cameos by Morgan Fairchild and David Ogden Stiers won`t be enough to save it.

''North and South'' follows Orry and George through West Point, where the handiwork of a sadistic Georgia drillmaster named Elkanah Bent (Phillip Casnoff) cements their friendship. Sectional rivalries and the issue of slavery gnaw at the bond of friendship, but Orry and George assume their commissions and are off to fight in the Mexican War.

A battle scene set at Churubusco, Mexico, in which Orry Main is crippled comprises all the military action you will witness in these 12 hours, ''North and South'' being very much a prelude to war. After Churubusco, Orry and George are mustered out, young Hazard returning to the family ironworks, young Main back to the plantation, there to pine away for Madeline and contemplate the decline of the agrarian South.

While Orry broods over lost love and slavery, his sisters, blond Brett

Then there is George`s sister Virgilia, played at well above room temperature by Kirstie Alley. A zealot and an Abolitionist, Virgilia loathes the South in general and the family Main in particular. On a visit to South Carolina, she seduces a slave named Grady (Georg Stanford Brown), helps set him free and is soon inveigled in romance and violence.

Virgilia`s rage, Secessionist politics and the burning fuse of civil war force Orry and George apart through the 1850s, despite a joint business venture to mill cotton with Hazard iron and the Main commodity, and despite a kinship between Billy Hazard and Orry`s young cousin Charles (Lewis Smith), who reprise the family friendship at West Point, this time on the brink of war.

Down on the farm, Orry and Madeline conspire to run away to the North after learning that Madeline`s mother was a slave. The plan fails, however, with Ashton taking the blame, and Justin LaMotte locks away his bride in silence and laudanum. The freed slave Grady is killed at Harper`s Ferry with John Brown`s (Johnny Cash) raiders and Virgilia is driven to a pathological hatred of Mains, leading to an attempt on Orry`s life in her brother`s Pennsylvania home.

As the firing on Ft. Sumter looms, ''North and South'' reaches a few conclusions but spends more of its time setting us up for ''Book II'' and the Civil War, to be fought on ABC next spring.

Twelve hours later, we know that friendship was not enough, that Orry and George will work for different sides in the War Between the States, that Charles and Billy will fight on different sides and, David L. Wolper hopes, that you will wonder what is to become of Madeline and Ashton and Elkanah Bent and all the rest.

`NORTH AND SOUTH`: AN NIGHT-BY-NIGHT GUIDE

Part 1: 8 p.m. Sunday on ABC-Ch. 7. Two young men, Orry Main (Patrick Swayze) of Mont Royal, S.C., and George Hazard (James Read) of Lehigh Station, Penn., are bound for West Point in June, 1842. En route north, Main, the son of a planter and a slaveowner, meets and is smitten by Madeline Fabray

(Lesley-Anne Down), a New Orleans woman on her way to visit the Mains` bad-guy neighbor, Justin LaMotte (David Carradine).

Hazard, the son of a rich industrialist, befriends Main at the Point, and they struggle with the sadism of drillmaster Elkanah Bent (Phillip Casnoff) and the resentment shown Orry as a Southerner. Back in South Carolina, Madeline, believing she has been abandoned by Orry, agrees to marry LaMotte.

Part 2: 8 p.m. Tuesday. After much trouble with the sadistic Bent, George and Orry graduate and are shipped off to the Mexican War. At Churubusco, in the only battle scene of the mini-series, Orry is crippled when sent on a suicidal mission by his commanding officer, Bent.

While helping Orry recover, George meets Constance Flynn (Wendy Kilbourne), daughter of an Army surgeon (Robert Mitchum). Sickened by war, George resigns from the Army and returns to Pennsylvania and the family ironworks. There he is met by his wimpy brother Stanley (Jonathan Frakes) and his ambitious sister-in-law, Isabel (Wendy Fulton). Orry goes home as well, and begins to meet in secret with Madeline.

Part 3: 8 p.m. Wednesday. George is married, and sisters emerge in the form of Virgilia Hazard (Kirstie Alley), the Abolitionist sister of George, and the Main sisters, Brett (Genie Francis) and Ashton (Terri Garber). The slavery issue strains the bonds between Orry and George, despite a decision to jointly build a cotton mill in the South.

The emergence of the next generation, the generation which will fight the Civil War, continues in the friendship between George`s younger brother Billy (John Stockwell) and Orry`s cousin, Charles (Lewis Smith), both off to West Point. Predictably, Brett, the good sister, wants Billy, but is fended off by Ashton, the sister as evil as Cinderella`s.

Part 4: 8 p.m. Thursday. On a family visit to Mont Royal, Virgilia takes the slave Grady (Georg Stanford Brown) as a lover. She helps him escape, then marries him in Philadelphia.

Ashton, engaged to James Huntoon (Jim Metzler), an ambitious Southern politician, takes a lover in Forbes LaMotte (William Ostrander) and conspires to take revenge on Billy Hazard for spurning her endless advances.

Meanwhile, Madeline learns of her mixed racial background and, fearing the wrath of her husband, agrees to run off to the North with Orry. The scheme is foiled when Madeline helps Ashton get an abortion and her husband construes the absence as infidelity. He locks Madeline away, drugging her with laudanum. Part 5: 8 p.m. Friday. Orry pines for Madeline, of course, while Bent returns to discover her secret at a New Orleans bordello run by Madam Conti

(Elizabeth Taylor). At a Pennsylvania gathering to divide the spoils of their successful venture into cotton, Orry and George are driven apart by Virgilia`s ranting. Brett and Billy wish to be married, but Orry puts them off.

On the route south, Orry and Brett are stopped at Harper`s Ferry by John Brown (Johnny Cash) and his raiders, the freed slave Grady among them. The Mains escape, but Grady is killed by the Militia. Virgilia is sent to an asylum, but is freed by a scheming Northern Congressman (David Ogden Stiers). Ashton and her lover work to stop the wedding of Brett and Billy, while Ashton`s husband emerges as a brassy voice of pro-secessionist South. As war approaches, Virgilia works against the election of the ''moderate'' Abe Lincoln (Hal Holbrook).

Part 6: 8 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7. With war imminent, young Charles Main resigns his commission in Texas and goes home to prepare for a war between the states. Ashton fails in an attempt to have Billy killed and Orry finally consents to the marriage between his sister Brett and Billy.

Again, Ashton conspires to have Billy done in at his wedding, but Madeline emerges from her laudanum fog to warn the Mains and, in the process, free herself of Justin. She takes refuge with Orry at Mont Royal.

Orry heads north to dissolve his partnership with George and, as Ft. Sumter is being fired upon, Virgilia incites a mob to attack her brother`s house and lynch Orry. The plot fails, as do a number of others in ''North And South.'' As geographic sides are taken, the television stage is set for ABC`s continuation next spring in ''North And South, Book II.''